Sketches by Boz, by Charles Dickens

Conclusion

We have taken for the subjects of the foregoing moral essays, twelve samples of married couples,
carefully selected from a large stock on hand, open to the inspection of all comers. These samples are intended for the
benefit of the rising generation of both sexes, and, for their more easy and pleasant information, have been separately
ticketed and labelled in the manner they have seen.

We have purposely excluded from consideration the couple in which the lady reigns paramount and supreme, holding
such cases to be of a very unnatural kind, and like hideous births and other monstrous deformities, only to be
discreetly and sparingly exhibited.

And here our self-imposed task would have ended, but that to those young ladies and gentlemen who are yet revolving
singly round the church, awaiting the advent of that time when the mysterious laws of attraction shall draw them
towards it in couples, we are desirous of addressing a few last words.

Before marriage and afterwards, let them learn to centre all their hopes of real and lasting happiness in their own
fireside; let them cherish the faith that in home, and all the English virtues which the love of home engenders, lies
the only true source of domestic felicity; let them believe that round the household gods, contentment and tranquillity
cluster in their gentlest and most graceful forms; and that many weary hunters of happiness through the noisy world,
have learnt this truth too late, and found a cheerful spirit and a quiet mind only at home at last.

How much may depend on the education of daughters and the conduct of mothers; how much of the brightest part of our
old national character may be perpetuated by their wisdom or frittered away by their folly — how much of it may have
been lost already, and how much more in danger of vanishing every day — are questions too weighty for discussion here,
but well deserving a little serious consideration from all young couples nevertheless.

To that one young couple on whose bright destiny the thoughts of nations are fixed, may the youth of England look,
and not in vain, for an example. From that one young couple, blessed and favoured as they are, may they learn that even
the glare and glitter of a court, the splendour of a palace, and the pomp and glory of a throne, yield in their power
of conferring happiness, to domestic worth and virtue. From that one young couple may they learn that the crown of a
great empire, costly and jewelled though it be, gives place in the estimation of a Queen to the plain gold ring that
links her woman’s nature to that of tens of thousands of her humble subjects, and guards in her woman’s heart one
secret store of tenderness, whose proudest boast shall be that it knows no Royalty save Nature’s own, and no pride of
birth but being the child of heaven!

So shall the highest young couple in the land for once hear the truth, when men throw up their caps, and cry with
loving shouts —